Posted on 20 August
2009 - Stockholm, Sweden: A study of the
water footprint of Germany emphasises how
the developed world needs to care for developing
world river basins
supplying vast quantities of “virtual water”
embedded in imported products and commodities,
WWF told World Water Week delegates today.
While German households
use 124 litres of water a day directly,
individual Germans use 5288 litres of water
a day when the water requirements of producing
their food, clothes and other consumption
items are included.
The report calculated
Germany’s water footprint at 159.5 cubic
kilometres of water annually, with only
half coming from German rain and rivers.
The water embedded in
coffee, soy and beef imports makes Brazil
Germany’s largest water trading partner,
followed by the Ivory Coast (cocoa, coffee,
bananas and cotton), neighbours France and
the Netherlands, the US and Indonesia (oilseeds,
coffee, coconuts, cotton and cocoa).
Other countries carrying
a significant water footprint from Germany
include Ghana, India, Argentina and Nigeria
and the increasingly drier Mediterranean
lands of Spain, Italy and Turkey.
“Germany is a relatively
water rich country but its reliance on water
sourced from some of the drier areas of
the world still makes it very vulnerable
to the degradation of river catchments and
groundwater supplies and water related impacts
of climate change elsewhere,” said Martin
Geiger, Head of Freshwater at WWF-Germany.
“National water footprints
are underlining just how dependant the developed
world is on water from areas where water
management is relatively poor,” said Dr
Stuart Orr, WWF International water policy
officer.
“It therefore pays for wealthy nations to
support the protection and better management
of the river basins and aquifers of the
developing world.”
Germany is to be commended
for having already taken one of the most
significant steps to caring for the sources
of its water in being the only G8 nation
to sign up to an international treaty designed
to reduce conflict and promote appropriate
water management on waters forming or crossing
borders.
However, more than a
decade since an overwhelming great majority
of the world’s nations approved the UN Watercourses
Convention, it still lacks enough signatories
to come into effect although three quarters
of the world’s countries share waters and
40 per cent of world population are in border
catchments.
“Other major economies
would do well to follow Germany’s example
in signing up to the UN Watercourses Convention
to provide a global framework for minimising
the risks of disruption to the water supplies
they depend on,” said Flavia Loures, who
leads a WWF-initiated global campaign to
have the convention brought into effect
by 2011.
+ More
Massive river water
transfers lacking scrutiny
Posted on 20 August
2009 - Stockholm, Sweden - Large scale transfers
of water from one river basin to another
are generally occurring without adequate
scrutiny of their economic, environmental
and social impacts, according to an analysis
released to World Water Week by WWF.
“With the number of
large water transfer schemes possibly nearly
tripling by 2020 and the amount of water
transferred expected to double, poorly assessed
mega-transfers have the potential to inflict
immense harm on both the communities donating
the water and the communities receiving
it,” said WWF-Germany Freshwater Director,
Martin Geiger.
Pipe dreams? looked
at existing and proposed large water transfer
schemes in Spain, Australia, Lesotho and
South Africa, Greece, Brazil, Peru and China
and found the schemes to be high cost, high
risk solutions to water problems “with the
benefits much less, or likely to be much
less, than the sales pitch,” Geiger said.
By 2020, large scale
water transfers from one river basin to
another are expected to reach around 800
cubic kilometres a year - around half a
Lake Ontario or more than eight Lake Genevas.
With problems evident in many of the 360
schemes implemented since 1950, the total
number of schemes is predicted to reach
between 1000 and 1240 by 2020.
Australia’s Snowy Mountains
Scheme took 99 per cent of the iconic Snowy
River’s flows to produce power and provide
for distant irrigation, causing generations
of conflict. Despite expensive re-engineering
and irrigation efficiency schemes, implementation
of a decision to return a forth of the Snowy
River flows is well behind schedule while
climate change impacts are threatening to
seriously reduce power generation.
Both donating and receiving
basins experienced depletion and damage
as Spain’s 282 km Tagus-Segura transfer
provoked a unrestrained expansion of irrigated
land, much now watered illegally. Planners
were wildly optimistic about the water available
and while users of the transferred water
were to pay for the scheme and its operations
only around 30 per cent of these payments
have been collected.
Greece’s proposed diversion
of the Acheloos River, mainly an economically
questionable US$ 3.9-5.9 billion (€ 2.9
– 4.4 billion) prop to thirsty cotton farming
heavily subsidised by the EU on the Thessaly
Plains, is likely to go ahead following
government circumvention of a Supreme Court
declaration it was illegal and would be
in violation of local, European and international
laws on issues including water management,
environmental assessment procedures and
cultural heritage protection.
The report finds that
in many cases there was little examination
of alternatives to massive schemes, particularly
in managing demand and promoting efficient
water use in the mostly water scarce regions.
“Often it is going to make much greater
sense to import water in extra food grown
in wetter areas than to import water to
grow food in a drier area,” said Geiger.
“However, non-technical solutions such as
this trade in virtual water, less water
intensive farming or more water efficient
industries and cities tend to be neglected
in planning directed at just supplying more
water continually.”
Water planning in isolation
is also likely to lead to unforeseen problems.
The report details the numerous examples
of poor integration with land use planning,
particularly for agriculture and inadequate
consultation on schemes leading to often
severe local and regional conflict.
“Don’t venture into
interbasin transfers unless you have done
your homework on impacts and alternatives,”
Geiger said.
“Otherwise you could
face serious planning deadlocks, operational
shortfalls, unforeseen economic and environmental
disruption, and expensive follow-up works
that will only partly remedy the damage.
If trends in water tables through climate
change are not properly taken into account,
the water planned for transfer might not
be there any more in future.”
